The Problem With Representationalism

   Last Sunday HuffPost columnist Talia Lavin wrote an eloquent statement that it is time for a woman to be president and that she will not apologize for wanting to be represented. It's precisely the air of inevitable social progress that was used to cast Hillary Clinton as the only possible candidate for president in 2016. It was time for a woman and it was Hillary Clinton's turn. This school of representational politics reduces each minority group to a set of "firsts", "pioneers" and "trailblazers." These include the first woman in space, the first African-American to play Major League Baseball in the modern era (this narrative has a tendency to erase the story of the last African-American to play Major League Baseball but that's not the same stirring representational tale of progress), the youngest Latinx woman elected to the House of Representatives. I'm not saying these milestones are not important, and I believe that we need to be the kind of country that will elect a woman or a Latinx person president if their abilities and policies fit the job.

   But, speaking as a straight white man, I have not found the payoff of being represented by people who look like me to be worth the neoliberal policy they have given us. I understand this is a privileged viewpoint. My privilege, however, is relevant here. It gives me a perspective that someone who does not share it does not possess. Most of the people in authority have looked like me for my entire life. All but one president of my lifetime has been a straight, white man. What have any of them done for me?

   They've done nothing for the fictional "middle class" they want us all to think means us. They've done nothing for the people who don't look like them, whom they have deliberately shut out of the halls of power. They've done nothing for the "white working class" which, speaking as a high school graduate with a semi-skilled semi-white collar job in technical support with a manufacturing company, to which I definitely belong. I don't care what the next president looks like, I care about the next president's policies.

   I want a strongly, hotly fought primary in which all the politicians who want to be the Democratic candidate for president tell us what they will do for us. I want to hear about universal health care, not universal health insurance. I want to hear about free college and forgiving student debt tax free, not about student debt relief as a favor to tax accountants. I want to hear about income inequality, worker rights, workplace democracy, a Green New Deal and public housing. In the end, I will vote for the candidate I think offers us the best chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

   I'm not willing to settle for anything less.